Call for participation: First International Workshop on Agile Transformation

Many organisations are adopting agile approaches, not only in their IT department, but increasingly across the whole organisation. The process of introducing agile practices in organisations is called an "agile transformation". In a review article published in 2016, Dikert et al. identify a number of challenges in agile transformations, such as resistance to change, lack of investment (training, coaching, lack of physical rearrangement to suit new ways of work), agile being "difficult to implement", challenges with coordination across teams, and that different approaches emerge in multi-team environments. The review focuses on software development organisations although many of the challenges identified are not necessarily specific to software development. As organisations increasingly engage in agile transformation processes, advice today is dominated by consultants and from experience reports. Researchers have suggested to understand agile transformation processes through sociotechnical theory, change management theory and we believe that there are a number of other fields to learn from to understand and improve the outcome of agile transformation processes.

We would like to challenge the scientific community to identify what should be of prime interest for researchers in this area, as there are growing opportunities to study agile transformation as companies increasingly adopt new large-scale agile frameworks. Organisations are learning from agile practice to embrace agility in their ways of working; agile practitioners can also benefit from the wider context of organisations undergoing agile transformations, to understand the wider implications of large-scale transformations and how to sustain them. We will create a workshop to provide an interactive arena for knowledge sharing and exchange of experiences between academics and practitioners.

We seek submissions in the form of lightning talks at the workshop. Examples of areas of interest are: Experience reports on the transformation process, how to sustain agile transformations, and theoretical lenses to understand and frameworks to improve the outcome of agile transformations.

We welcome suggestions for short talks for the workshop by 10 March 2019. Title and abstracts (maximum 300 words) of lightning talks for workshop will be reviewed by at at least two members of program committee. Submit at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=atrans2019